In Zitkala-Sa's autobiographical story "The School Days of an Indian Girl," why does she feel like an outcast among the whites as well as among her...

The insensitivity and contemptuous attitude of the whites towards the author caused her to feel herself as an outcast among the whites.

She begins her autobiographical story "The School Days of an Indian Girl" by narrating her painful experience in her train journey to the missionary school. She was travelling from her native village in Yankton Indian Reservation to the school in Wabash, Indiana.

Many passengers from the white community “stopped their haste” to scornfully scrutinize her.  Then, few children began to point fingers at her “moccasined feet” derisively. All these embarrassed her tremendously. She was aghast to find their mothers joining them, instead of rebuking them. She says, 

“I sank deep into the corner of my seat, for I resented being watched… Their mothers, instead of reproving such rude curiosity, looked closely at me, and attracted their children's further notice to my blanket.”

In the boarding school, she had hardly made any new friends. Instead, she had plenty of harrowing experiences. Her repeated experiences of indifference and “extreme indignities” by the “paleface” women of the school deepened her sense of being an outcast.

The author found the culture of the white people to be strange and disgusting. In her native culture, long hair had had a special significance. She says, “Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!”  Despite her protest, she was tied to a chair and her “long hair was shingled like a coward's.”

The author felt as if she was being robbed of her Native American traditions when she was forced to eat, dress and behave like a white person. Away from her mother and own people, she began to feel more and more marginalized in the cold and alien world of the residential school.

In another displeasing incident, she experienced white people’s “strong prejudice against my (her) people.” It happened during an inter-college oratorical contest. Some “rowdies” (college students who were whites) “threw out a large white flag, with a drawing of a most forlorn Indian girl on it.” They had printed in “bold black letters” words that were used derogatorily for Native Americans. She, however, won the contest, along with another student.

Besides these distressing incidents, there were many other instances that intensified her sense of isolation. In one such episode, her friend was brutally thrashed for lying down on the snow to make an impression on the snow floor. In fact, they were three students in all, including the author, who had fallen themselves on the snow to see their impressions.  

The author narrates another painful incident when she had lost one of her close friends because of the neglect of the school authorities. The school staff’s insensitive treatment of her friend, when she was lying on her deathbed, filled the author with extreme anger and disgust. She says,

At her deathbed I stood weeping, as the paleface woman sat near her moistening the dry lips… I grew bitter... I despised the pencils that moved automatically, and the one teaspoon which dealt out, from a large bottle, healing to a row of variously ailing Indian children.

So, we see that innumerable instances of neglect, indifference and disdain for three years had caused her to feel like an outcast among the whites.

Not only this, she began to feel herself as an outcast among her own people. When she came back home after successfully completing her diploma, she began to find it uncomfortable to adjust herself with his family members and community people. She says, 

“I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East, and the unsatisfactory "teenth" in a girl's years.”

She wasn't able to express her feelings to her brother or mother. Her brother, who was almost ten years older to her, “did not quite understand my (the author’s) feelings.” Moreover, that she was educated now, her mother didn't know how to comfort her daughter convincingly. This lack of communication and understanding created a rift between the author and her family members.

Besides, she was appalled to find out how drastically the people of her Yankton Dakota tribe had changed under the influence of the white culture. She says,

“They were no more young braves in blankets and eagle plumes, nor Indian maids with prettily painted cheeks. They had gone three years to school in the East, and had become civilized. The young men wore the white man's coat and trousers, with bright neckties. The girls wore tight muslin dresses, with ribbons at neck and waist. At these gatherings they talked English.”

All these reasons made her increasingly uneasy in the company of her own people.